Book 14: The Ultimate Vegan Guide by Erik Marcus

Just a bit of background on me first: the first time I became a vegetarian was the last month of my freshman year of college. I took a nutrition class that fulfilled my environmental science requirement, and I learned about how terrible meat production was for the environment. It takes 5 pounds of grain to produce 1 pound of meat, and 2,400 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of meat. There were many other facts that I knew back then, and I decided to stop eating meat. I lasted for a year before I met my boyfriend. His parents didn’t invite me over as much because I was a pain to cook for, so I stopped being a vegetarian.

Fast forward to the beginning of April. I was looking for ideas that my characters could fight about, and someone on the Script Frenzy forums mentioned that she was a vegetarian and gets made fun of for it. I realized that that was a great thing that my character could be, so I decided to make my main character, Adelyn, a vegetarian. I decided to look up some facts for Adelyn to mention when she gets made fun of, and that’s how I ended up on the PETA website. I ended up watching a terrible video on the de-horning of cows, and I almost cried. I looked up more facts (though no more videos – the horrible pictures were enough), and I decided to become a vegetarian. My plan is to become a full vegan, but I’m doing it in stages. Right now I’m focusing on making as many vegan meals as possible while I read as much as I can about the lifestyle. This was one of the first books I read:

Summary:
A short, easy-to-read guide to becoming a vegan. The book opens with several different reasons to become a vegan and then lists various tips and tricks to becoming and staying vegan. He lists places to go shopping, restaurants where you can get vegan-friendly food, and tips on how to get yourself in the right mindset to stick with your commitment to become vegan, even when it starts to seem too hard.

Opinion:
To be honest, I was a bit worried when I started this book. Marcus starts by talking about multiple reasons to become a vegan, though he points out that the “it’s healthy” and “it’s better for the environment” reasons aren’t as black and white as most people think. He acknowledges that you can be healthy and an environmentalist and still eat meat. While I think that makes him more credible to people who are reluctant about this lifestyle (like my boyfriend), it made me feel a little like he was trying to talk me out of being a vegan.

And then he started talking about the cruelty to animals reason, and I felt like I was justified in my decision again. I read this book quickly, and it definitely made me feel more excited about becoming a vegan. I thought the best part was that he didn’t try to make me feel guilty about the fact that I wasn’t ready to give up all animal products just yet. Instead, he provided tips on how to slowly wean yourself off of them. He also provides links to many other sites and lists many other books that provide interesting information. I highly recommend this book for everyone who has ever considered going vegetarian or vegan.